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Platonics Ark, the world’s first 3D printer for architects brings scale models back to daily design work

Platonics Ltd., the Finnish 3D printing company with roots in Startup Sauna and Urban Mill, this week announced the availability of the company’s first product, Platonics Ark. The revolutionary 3D printer is designed especially to make architects’ everyday life easier, faster, and more creative. Platonics Ark is a result of years of background research and development done together with architects and architecture offices.

The core mission of Platonics Ltd. is to make 3D printing easy, efficient and fast for architects, and other 3D printing enthusiasts. Julio Tiusanen, CEO and Co-founder of Platonics comments: “We at Platonics don’t think architects should adapt to 3D printing, but 3D printing should adapt to architecture. We want to help architects better communicate about their design concepts so that people from different backgrounds can easily comprehend projects.”

One of the core features, which make 3D printing so smooth with Platonics Ark is that it reduces the amount of processes required before the actual printing. Moving from file to print takes just four steps with the Platonics software. In minutes it turns CAD files into 3D printable STL files with no pre-processing; a process, which could otherwise take up to 10 hours of manual work. The software allows for printing directly from Archicad, Revit, Rhino, Vectorworks and Sketchup.

Adding to the easiness of the software, the maintenance of Platonics Ark has been reduced to a minimum. Its self-cleaning and self-calibrating printer, and easily replaceable modular design, spares the user from messy cleaning and handling clogged parts.

The research & development of Platonics Ark has included 1,027 conversations with architects all over the world and an intensive piloting period with the leading architecture offices in Finland, including Ala Architects, JKMM, Lunden Architecture Company, Serum Architects Ltd., Verstas, and Studio Puisto.

Platonics Ark is now available for pre-ordering through crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. Product deliveries for Indiegogo backers are targeted to start in April 2018, and full-scale production is set to launch in May 2018. More information on Platonic’s website